More about the Cambodian people

One thing that I haven't mentioned about my time here is that the people that we walk past every day on our way to the schools, the children playing in the back streets, the grandmothers cooking corn over fire buckets on street corners and the mothers holding sleeping babies, they all always greet us with a smile and say hello to us.

When we see children that we teach they always wave and call "Hello Teacher" and offer to carry our bags, and try to give us gifts or want to hold our hands. Even the babies wave. So even though you can be cheerfully ripped off by someone one minute, as a westerner you are constantly genuinely welcomed as a visitor (who isn't a sex tourist) too.

This is such a new country in so many ways and to be so genuinely appreciated for just coming here as well as teaching is rather overwhelming at times.

The children I teach are like any other children the world over; they fight and laugh and play, and they are naughty, are cheeky and adorable. It's just that some of them have no parents they have to live there at the school. Some have parents who have HIV and are just too ill to care for them anymore, and some have families who are too poor to care for them or there is just no room for them to sleep in the shacks where they live in the slums.

Some come in every day in the same dirty clothes, some have head lice, and some have infected sores on their feet which make them cry. They don't have shoes.


These are the kind of children that are in danger of being trafficked as drudges, slaves or sex workers, and the terrible thing is that these children often choose to go rather than see the rest of their families broken apart, suffer or starved, they see it as their duty. The school not only stops them from being sold, but gives them the opportunity of a future where they can support their families with a good job, prevent siblings from being sold too.


The best things is that it gives them the chance for a few hours a day just to be normal kids.

The more I stay here, the more I realise how important this kind of oganisation is.